Migration dynamics of immigrants: who leaves, who returns and how quick?

In this paper we analyze the demographic factors that influence the return and repeated migration of immigrants. Using longitudinal data from Statistics Netherlands we track migration histories of recent immigrants to The Netherlands and analyze which migrants will stay in the country, which migrants are more prone to leave and how quick they leave. In order to identify these migrants we apply a mover-stayer duration model on the time spent in the country. We also analyze the return from abroad to The Netherlands of these migrants. Results disclose differences among migrants by migration motive and by country of origin and lend support to our analytical framework. Combining the model for departure from the country and the model for returning to the country provides the long-run stay probability of a specific migrant. It also yields a framework for simulating the life-cycle migration dynamics. The major findings are: (1) labor migrants and students are more prone to leave and migrants who come for family reasons remain in the country more often, (2) migrants from the `guestworker' countries, Turkey and Morocco, will stay in the country more often than migrants from Western countries.